


To Touch A Soul

by theriacs



Series: Balance the Books [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: First Omnic Crisis, Gen, first reaper, now bastion, oops mercy did it again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7269049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriacs/pseuds/theriacs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mercy knows what it feels like to touch a soul.</p><p>Not with words or kind gestures, but to actually cradle a soul in her own two hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Touch A Soul

Mercy knows what it feels like to touch a soul.

Not with words or kind gestures, but to actually cradle a soul in her own two hands.

The first time it happened, Mercy was kneeling beside a young woman in the middle of the battlefield during the Omnic Crisis. No amount of begging or bandages was going to change this woman’s fate. The Valkyrie suit was merely a prototype at the time, and the only fully functional parts were the headpiece and thrusters.

As she was pressing thick gauze to the woman’s bleeding side, fighting a losing battle while shrapnel flew around them, a soft light rose from the under her fingers. Blood-soaked bandages tumbled from her hands, letting more of the otherworldly glow breathe. Mercy gaped at the sight, moving to check for a pulse without really registering what she was doing.

Another body slammed into hers--very much alive and angry--that jarred her out of her stupor.

“Mercy, move! Now!” Jack Morrison barked in a gruff, authoritative tone that left no room for argument. Heavy rounds ripped through the air above both their heads, but Mercy still struggled to get out from under him.

“W-wait! Not yet!” She protested, her eyes glued on the wispy orb hovering over the young woman’s body.

Jack briefly scanned their surrounding to see if they were still being targeted. A deep, ferocious roar by Winston followed by a crunch of metal assured him for the time being that he didn’t have to haul their obsessive medic out of the fray. His eyes tried to find what Mercy was urgently scrambling back to.

“She’s gone, Mercy. There’s nothing else we can do for her. Time to move.” Of course. Jack couldn’t see what she was looking at.

“No--no, just wait!” She untangled herself from his grip, her hands working to adjust the band above her head to see it better. It wasn’t just her imagination, right? Her quantum visualizer was calibrated correctly? Mercy crawled back over, reaching out with hands caked with blood and rubble.

The woman barely registered her commanding officer’s impatient cursing behind her. “Jack,” she breathed out, so stunned that she slipped out of formalities. “...I think it’s a _soul_.”

It’s soft golden light felt... _shy_ in her hands. Fragile, like the slightest pressure would destroy it. Endless new possibilities of what she could do with this new discovery whipped around in her head before an overwhelming blanket of fear and regret smothered Mercy like a thick rug. It choked her lungs and immediately brought tears to her eyes from how much she could feel this soul’s final moments. Her consciousness was blurring with a foreign one as wisps of light were absorbed into her body.

Mercy doesn’t _learn_ about the soul so much as she _knows_ it.

She _knows_ every thread from it that was woven into the tapestry of life until the soul was violently ripped out from its rightful place. She _knows_ every choice and thought the soul carried with it and moulded it the way it was. A blueprint to a person.

It scared her, how much she knew.

Panic swelled in her chest, because she **doesn’t** want to know--doesn’t want this responsibility, doesn’t want to open the gate to inevitable corruption, doesn’t want the temptation of recreating souls to bring her parents back from the dead.

The connection was broken when a heavy slug tore through her shoulder blade as two omnics jumped them. Mercy cried out in pain, slumping over and watching with a grimace as it slipped through her fingers and shattered against an old, rusted siege automaton. Jack immediately returned fire with his assault rifle at the deadly omnics, joined instantly by Tracer with two zips of blue.

“Mercy! Alright, luv’?” Tracer asked with concern as soon as she flickered back from taking down one of the omnics.

“Through and through.” Jack growled an answer for her after seeing the bloody bullet embedded in the rubble behind them. He slammed down his biotic field. “Extract the good doctor out of here, Tracer, then regroup with our Delta squadron.” His steely eyes levelled Mercy with a harsh glare. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“Oi, is it really necessary to be so rough ab--”

“Now, Tracer!”

“Yep, okay. 5x5, Sir.” The Slipstream pilot snapped to attention and readied her pistols. “Can you walk, Mercy?”

The blonde medic capped the syringe she had just injected into herself. “A good a time as any.” She answered dryly, feeling her experimental nanobots simultaneously numbing and mending bone and tissue.

Tracer looked like she wanted to ask what Mercy just shot herself up with, but her commanding officer’s glare and approaching omnics was more than enough motivation to get moving. Mercy spared one more look at siege automaton where she lost the soul before following Tracer.

\---

After the first incident, Mercy swore to never touch another soul again.

When she thought back to that moment with a clear head, the doctor realized how foolish she had acted. She wasn’t all that eager to find out if another’s soul could displace her own. The suspension she received from Jack didn’t help either.

Finishing her mandatory stint with an on-site therapist after their squadron returned to headquarters, Mercy returned to her position at the head of Overwatch’s Medical Research full-time and resolved to accomplish two things:

1) Incorporate a safe way to handle souls.

2) Recommend Overwatch a more competent therapist.

She should’ve added “develop biolock on Valkyrie suit” as one of her tasks.

She’d regret that in the future.

But hey, priorities.

**Author's Note:**

> They say our souls are contained in quantum particles.


End file.
